Names of the Lion

by
John Schoffstall

The 10th century poet of Aleppo, Ibn Khalawayh, wrote a book with 400 names of the lion in it. Here are some:

Whose coat is yellow, stained with red
Whose head and neck are big for his body
Whose face expresses great displeasure
Whose eyes are bloodshot
Whose speech is uncouth
Whose gut sloshes when he walks
Whose food has bones in it
Who eats until he’s sick of food
Who looks for trouble in the night
Whose foe is outraged in the dust
Whose prey is turned inside out
Who disregards the rights of others
Who hates frustration
Who doesn’t care what happens

Reminds you of that famous passage in Borges, doesn’t it? Was Ibn Khalawayh, like Borges, writing fiction? Did medieval Arabic really have 400 names for lions?

Here is a recent (and perhaps the only?) translation, by David Larsen:

About John

I have been writing fiction for as long as I can remember. I was first published in college, but wrote only intermittently for the next several decades, during which I started and ran a small business, entered medical school, and practiced as an academic emergency physician for almost three decades. I took up writing fiction more seriously around 2002, and since then have published short fiction in Asimov’s, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Strange Horizons, Interzone, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, and other venues. One of my stories, “Fourteen Experiments in Postal Delivery,” has been reprinted in The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, Twentieth Annual Collection. My first novel, Half-Witch, was published by Small Beer Press in July, 2018.